I innovation

I am a Marketer: SMME, Online, social and ORM

I am a Coder: Web system and mobile web

I am a Data-Dork: Social data, web analytics, respondent data

I consult | I start | I speak | I write

About

Tim Shier

After graduating from UCT with a BSc in Computer Science and Psychology, I have been actively involved in the marketing, innovation, crowdsourcing and startup environment for the last 9 years.

With some early startup learnings / failures I became marketing manager at Quirk. I then helped launch BrandsEye (as MD) and took it into 113 countries - winning marketing organisation of the year in 2011. I sat on the Digital Media and Marketing Assoc. of SA in 2010-11 as executive head of Measurement.

In 2012 I helped start 42Engines (a Quirk investment vehicle) and wrote a methodology that tested hundreds of startup concepts. From this I was involved in the creation of 4 businesses. In 2013 I won Launch48 startup competition for a low income employee / employer matching platform. I'm a founder at InstantAfrica where I marketed, sold, coded, managed the community and oversaw research as a one-man army.

Work aside, I'm fascinated with WHY people make the decisions that they do, the role that technology has to play in driving efficiency, the implications of the information age on human evolution. I am also a keen (albeit terrible) magician. All too often I can be found pondering on a mountain somewhere (and prefer to have meetings where the air is cleaner).

2006

Launched, and failed, first business (Vututu)

2007

Graduated UCT (BSc Comp & Psychology)

2008

Quirk Marketing Manager

2009

BrandsEye Managing Director

2010

Executive Head of Measurement for DMMA

2012

Founding member of 42Engines

2013

Founded InstantAfrica

2014

Completely not secret plans!

What I Do

I love difficult problems and apply a mixture of marketing, digital, code and data driven insight to solve them faster.

Marketing

Under my tenure as MD at BrandsEye we won Marketing Organisation of the Year (2011). I was the marketing manager at Quirk and over the years I've judged PR and marketing awards. Specific skills: digital, social media and online reputation management.

Code

Been in love with Code since the age of 10. This culminated in a BSc at UCT in Computer Science. Fundamentally, I believe in using technology to do the heavy lifting and time intensive tasks. Specific skills: MVP, prototyping, HTML5, MVC frameworks and backend Java.

Data

I am a data-dork and was previously Executive Head of Measurement for the Digital Media and Marketing Assoc. of SA. I believe that data must be fast, accurate and lead to incremental, intentional change.
Specific skills: Social data, web analytics, respondent data, "big data", analysis and insight generation.

Innovation

I have a healthy irreverence for the past and believe that efficiency will always win. It is off this basis that Marketing, Code and Data come together to empower innovative change within businesses of any size. Specific skills: Problem-Solution paradigm, systems thinking, design thinking, marketing, code and data.